Since 1/1/14, Thames Barrier Has Been Closed 40 Times; Maximum Annual Recommendation = 50

[hatrack]

EDIT



Built at a cost (in today’s money) of around £1.6 billion and finished in 1983, the 1,700ft Thames Barrier has paid for itself many times over in the 31 years it has been operating: in terms of lives and of properties across 50 square miles of a mega-city that is built on a soggy flood plain slowly sinking into the clay.

Now the extreme weather of recent months, and the fact that the Thames has risen to its highest levels in 60 years in some parts, is focusing attention once more on the Barrier. Since the beginning of this year, it has closed an unprecedented 40 times – close to its recommended number of annual closures (50) – at a cost of £5,000 a time. On Monday it closed for the twentieth time in 10 days. In the whole of the Eighties, it closed on just four occasions. Since it became operational it has closed only 166 times (almost half to protect central London and the remainder to regulate river flooding and damage upstream).

Some are saying that this wonderful piece of engineering, Brunellian in imagination and scale, needs to be replaced – and fast. Current plans by the Environment Agency, which operates London’s flood defences, to keep the Barrier operational until the 2070s are untenable, they say, in the face of climate change that is producing rising sea levels and more powerful storms of the kind that have made this winter catastrophic for so many. So is it time for TB2?

EDIT

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/10646439/The-Thames-Barrier-has-saved-London-but-is-it-time-for-TB2.html

[hunter]

1. Oh, shit!

I see the century ahead as a lot of too little, too late, until the changes simply overwhelm us.